University of Houston
Office of External Communications
Houston, TX 77204-5017 Fax; 713/743-8199

Baylor College of Medicine
Office of Public Affairs
Houston, TX 77030

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 1, 2004

Contact: Ross Tomlin
Baylor College of Medicine
713/798-7973(office)
htomlin@bcm.tmc.edu
http://www.bcm.edu/pa/

Contact: Eric Gerber
713/743-8189 (office)
713/617-7130(pager)
egerber@uh.edu

HOUSTON – (December 1, 2004) – Advanced degree seekers deciding between medicine and law can now experience the best of both worlds for the first time in the Southwest. Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and the University of Houston Law Center (UHLC) will offer an MD/JD dual degree in the fall of 2005.

“Medicine and law have been connected ever since human societies have originated as hunters and gatherers, so there is a natural affiliation between the two,” said Dr. Victor R. Scarano, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at BCM. “Both BCM and the University of Houston are responding to today’s increasingly complex health care environment and societal need for interdisciplinary physicians who can navigate the relationship between medicine and law.”

BCM and UHLC are the first institutions west of the Mississippi River to provide such a joint degree program.

“The JD/MD concurrent program shows that the UH Law Center is indisputably committed to maintaining the best and most innovative health law program in the country,” said Seth J. Chandler, vice dean and co-director of the Health Law & Policy Institute at the University of Houston’s Law Center.

In the six-year program, students would spend the first two years at Baylor, the next two at UH and the final two at both schools. Applicants must take both the MCAT and LSAT exams and be accepted to both schools for admission into the joint program. Dr. Wayne J. Riley, vice president and vice dean of health affairs and governmental relations at BCM, estimates that between two and six students will be admitted in the first year.

“We are not going for large numbers of students but rather very select individuals who are committed to a long-term degree program,” said Riley, who will serve as an ex-officio member of the MD/JD advisory committee. “This will be a natural affiliation in Houston, where two outstanding institutions engaged in medicine and law have come together to offer a unique educational experience.”

BCM ranked No. 13 overall among medical schools in 2004 by U.S. News & World Report, which has consistently listed UHLC’s Health Law & Public Policy Institute as No. 1 among health law programs in the country. Only 17 other institutions in the United States offer the joint program, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Scarano and Riley cite the growing, critical nexus between the medical and legal professions, especially in healthcare policy, risk management and malpractice issues, intellectual property rights and biotechnology.

Graduates with both MD and JD degrees can choose between any number of career paths.

“We are intending that from the outset these students are going to be integrated into both the medical and the legal communities so that they can feel that they are truly integral members of both professions,” said Scarano, who will serve as co-chair of the MD/JD advisory committee as well as instructor of the introductory health law course. “There are numerous areas in the social structure that involve interactions between law and medicine, especially with all of our newer discoveries and the advancement of medicine into genetics.”

For more information about UH visit the university’s ‘Newsroom’ at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.